Tuesday, April 28, 2015

(Moscow) The Russian military today decided to unveil its latest Armata Main Battle Tank (MBT) and the family of vehicles based on its chassis. First off, is the Armata itself:

The Armata main battle tank (MBT) also known as the T-14 and built by UralVagonZavod. The key feature of the Armata is its unmanned turret, with all three crew members (commander, gunner, driver) seated in a crew capsule at the front of the vehicle's hull. Although the turret is covered in the MoD image, Armata is understood to be armed with a 2A82A 125-mm smoothbore main gun fed by a bustle-mounted automatic loader equipped with 32 rounds. Armata is also reported to feature a 30 mm coaxial secondary armament and a 12.7 mm machine gun. Despite being covered, the turret's bustle-mounted automatic loader and commander's independent sighting system are clearly visible under the shrouding material.

The Kurganets-25 is the replacement for the Russian army's BMP family of vehicles. Understood to weigh in at 25 tonnes, Kurganets marks a sharp increase in the weight of Russia's tracked IFVs, with even the latest BMP-3 variant weighing in at under 20 tonnes, and earlier BMP-1/2 vehicles being under 15 tonnes. Two different configurations of Kurganets will be present at the parade. Both feature extensive additional armour packages to the sides of the hull, but have different turret configurations.

Although the turrets are shrouded, one of the variants appears to be armed with a 30 mm turret - understood to be the same RCT turret that arms the Armata-based heavy IFV. The other turret appears to lack an obvious main gun. This could either represent an APC or command variant equipped with an RCT armed with a machine gun or automatic grenade launcher (AGL), or could be because the main gun has been removed for the parade rehearsals.

The latter one with a 57 mm cannon. Although covered, the apparent profile of the second Kurganets turret appears similar to that of the UralVagonZavod AU-220M turret displayed recently at IDEX in Abu Dhabi - minus its 57 mm cannon.

The new heavy infantry fighting vehicle (IFV)/armoured personnel carrier (APC) variant also known as the T-15. Although the T-15 turret is covered, this IFV variant is understood to be armed with a KBP Instrument Design Bureau Epoch Almaty remote control turret (RCT) armed with a 30 mm 2A42 cannon, 7.62 mm coaxial MG, and a bank of two Kornet-EM anti-tank guided weapons (ATGWs) on either side. In the MoD image, the heavy IFV is also fitted with an advanced armour package on the side of the vehicle, although it has only been partially applied to the latter part of the vehicle's flanks.

Well, the covers will be off next month and we will finally see the Russians' latest vehicle family.

Friday, April 24, 2015

(Fox News) Italian security forces were rounding up 18 Islamic extremists Friday who prosecutors said were behind a failed 2010 plot to attack the Vatican as well as a bombing at a Pakistan market that killed more than 100 a year earlier.

Prosecutor Mauro Mura told reporters in Cagliari, Sardinia, on Friday that wiretaps indicated the suspected terrorists, including two former bodyguards for Usama bin Laden, planned a bomb attack at the Vatican and went as far as to send a suicide bomber to Rome. Mura said the attack plans never went further and that the suicide bomber left Italy, though it wasn't clear why.

“We don’t have proof, we have strong suspicion,” Mario Carta, head of the police unit leading the investigation, said when asked for more details on a possible attack against the seat of the Catholic church.

Authorities said nine suspects had been caught, and another nine were being sought, three of whom were believed to still be in the country. One of the suspects arrested Friday had a construction business in Sardinia that participated in work for a Group of Eight summit planned for Sardinia but that was later moved to quake-stricken Aquilia, in Abruzzo to boost reconstruction. Another was an imam in the northern province of Bergamo.

Vatican secretary of state Pietro Parolin said the threat is chilling, even if it is old.

"We are all exposed and we are all afraid," Parolin said. "But the pope is very calm for this, it's enough to watch him meeting people with great clarity and serenity."

Sevdet Besim, one of the Australian plotters, making in ISIS-associated sign in a
picture posted to Instagram in March 2015

(The Independent) A 14-year-old British boy accused of encouraging a man in Australia to carry out a terrorist beheading and attack a war remembrance event has appeared in court.

The teenager from Blackburn - thought to be the youngest person charged with Islamist-related terror offences in the UK- was remanded in custody to youth detention accommodation after District Judge Emma Arbuthnot turned down a bail application at Westminster Magistrates' Court in London.

The boy, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, was charged yesterday with two counts of inciting terrorism overseas.

He was arrested after police allegedly uncovered communications with an 18-year-old man in Australia. No details of the communications have been released as they form part of the investigation, Australian police said.

Five Australian teenagers were also arrested over the alleged plans to attack at an ANZAC Day ceremony in Melbourne. Police said evidence suggested that the plot involved attacking police officers.

One of the Australian teenagers has been identified by Australian media as Sevdet Besim from Narre Warren, Victoria, a suburb of Melbourne.

The alleged plot is said to have involved targeting police officers at the ceremony marking the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps’ First World War battle in Gallipoli on April 25.

Between March 15 and 26 the British teenager is said to have incited another person to commit an act of terrorism, "namely to carry out an attack at an Anzac parade in Australia with the aim of killing and/or causing serious injury to people".

It is also alleged that on March 18 he incited another person to behead a member of the public in Australia.

The boy, dressed in a police-issue grey tracksuit, spoke in a soft voice and stood with his arms folded as he confirmed his name, age and address at the start of the hearing.

ANZAC Day is the annual April 25 commemoration of the 1915 Gallipoli landings - the first major military action fought by the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps during World War I.

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

(AFP) Sid Ahmed Ghlam, a 24-year-old electrical engineering student and an Algerian national, was arrested in Paris on Sunday morning after calling an ambulance. It appears that he had accidentally shot himself in the leg.

After the emergency services alerted police that they were treating a gunshot wound, Ghlam’s car was discovered by following a blood trail.

Inside the vehicle was an “arsenal” of weapons, Molins said, including handguns, bullet-proof vests and an AK-47 assault rifle.

They also found a laptop and three mobile phones, which Molins said were used to contact an accomplice in Syria “who explicitly asked him to target a church”.

More weapons were found in Ghlam’s flat, as well as “documents in Arabic relating to al Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS) group”.

As well as the weapons and documents, police said they had also found magnetic flashing blue lights of the type that police fix to the roofs of unmarked cars, and orange “Police” armbands used by non-uniformed officers.

Ghlam’s DNA was also found in the car of a 32-year-old fitness instructor Aurélie Châtelain who was found dead in Villejuif, a suburb of Paris, on Sunday.

Earlier, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Ghlam was known to intelligence services for wanting to fight with jihadists in Syria.

Former US President viewed as 'permanently damaging' to Israel, diplomatic source reveals.

I hope they extend the same courtesy to Obama beginning on January 21, 2017.

(INN) Israeli President Reuven Rivlin has refused to meet former US President Jimmy Carter in an upcoming visit to Israel, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Gaza due to his anti-Israeli views, Channel 10 reports Monday.

A senior diplomatic source told the news agency that Carter, who has a long history of antagonism towards Israel, is "permanently damaging" to Israel and that Israel's leaders should refrain from meeting with him, on principle. Rivlin's advisors have said the same.

In May 2014, the former President supported the Palestine Liberation Organization's (PLO) unilateral push to join international organizations in breach of the ongoing peace talks with Israel and the 1993 Oslo Accords.

The year before, he called on the European Union (EU) to label products coming from "illegal Israeli settlements" - despite the fact that Israel's presence in Judea and Samaria is legal under international law.

In 2006, Carter wrote a book entitled "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." His claims in the book, which he continued to espouse even after factual errors were revealed, led the reporting accuracy group CAMERA to say that the ex-president “clearly has an Israel, and even a Jewish problem.”

SANAA (Reuters) - An air strike on a Scud missile base in the Houthi-controlled Yemeni capital Sanaa triggered a big explosion that killed 25 people and wounded almost 400 on Monday, state news agency Saba said.

Saudi Arabia has led an alliance of Sunni Arab countries in air strikes against the Iran-allied Shi'ite Houthi group and army units loyal to ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

"Twenty-five citizens were killed and more than 398 were wounded, mostly women and children, according to a preliminary figure after the Saudi aggression's bombing today," said the agency, which is run by the Houthis.

The number could not be immediately verified, but medical sources told Reuters at least 15 people had been killed and scores wounded.

The blast hit the base on Faj Attan mountain beside the Hadda district, home to the presidential palace and many embassies, blowing out the windows of homes for kilometers around and sending a tall mushroom cloud into the air.

Resident Adel Mansour said it was the largest explosion in more than three weeks of bombing by the Saudi-led coalition.

"For the first time since the start of the bombing the windows of my house smashed," Mansour said. "My children are terrified and one of my relatives fainted because of the force of the blast."

The campaign has repeatedly targeted the Faj Attan facility along with other military bases and airports in Sanaa and throughout the country.

For some strange reason, the convicted, instead of rejoicing that they finally achieved the much coveted martyrdom, plan to appeal. It's like a commercial, where they try to sell to you something they don't want for themselves.

CAIRO (Reuters) - An Egyptian court sentenced 22 members of the Muslim Brotherhood to death on Monday over an attack on a police station in a district outside Cairo in 2013, judicial sources said.

The assault was part of a wave of violence that rocked the country after the army removed elected Islamist president Mohamed Mursi from power following mass protests against his rule in June 2013.

One other defendant, who is a juvenile, was given a 10 year sentence, the sources said. A lawyer for the convicted men said they would appeal.

I regularly get reports of horrible crimes that are committed there against Christians, especially in northern Iraq. I have visited those places and I remember that there were many churches and monasteries there. The city of Mosul alone had 45 churches. Now there is not a single one. The buildings have been destroyed. Four hundred churches have been destroyed in Syria…

The presence of the Christian minority was a factor that, in a good sense, brought tolerance and good relations between Christians and Muslims…

Now Christianity is the most persecuted religion. The same is happening in Nigeria, Pakistan, and Northern Africa. In some countries of Europe, too, people are prohibited from wearing crosses at work, citing the need for tolerance, do not use the word ‘Christmas’, do not call Easter – Easter, saying just winter holiday or spring holiday instead.

I wonder what the mother of his 4 children thinks about his quest for virgins.

A British Muslim father feared to be travelling to Syria with his young family is a “champion for shariah” law who used to be a member of the banned extremist group al-Mujahiroun, it has been claimed.

Asif Malik, 31, his partner Sara Kiran, 29, and their four children have not been seen for almost two weeks. The family, from Slough in Berkshire, left without mentioning any holiday or travel plans to their friends or relatives, which police described as entirely out of character.

The group was seen boarding a ferry from Dover to Calais and are then believed to have travelled south through Europe by train. Thames Valley Police said they may be heading to Syria, where Islamic State (IS) is fighting to establish a Muslim caliphate.

Anjem Choudary, the radical Muslim cleric, has claimed that Mr Malik had formerly been a member of al-Mujahiroun and had remained “very influential in the community” since the group was banned five years ago.

“Back in the day he was a member until the group was banned. He was still part of our demonstrations and lectures but I hadn't seen him for a few months,” Choudary told the Daily Telegraph.

Describing Mr Malik as a “very good friend”, he continued: “He is a very studious man, a very good Muslim character. He was always a champion for shariah and is very influential in the community.”

(AFP) A Pakistani man and his father have been arrested in the country's latest so-called "honour killing" after they set the son's wife alight for leaving the house without asking his permission, police said Sunday.

Muhammad Siddique became enraged on learning that his wife, Shabana Bibi, 25, had visited her sister without first asking him if she could go out, her brother Muhammad Azam said.

Siddique and his father then beat Bibi before dousing her with petrol and setting her on fire in Central Pakistan's Muzaffargarh district on Friday, Azam said.

Bibi had been married to Siddique for three years, during which time she had suffered repeated domestic abuse for the couple's inability to have children, Azam said.

Suffering burns to 80 percent of her body, Bibi died of her injuries in hospital on Saturday.

"We have arrested the husband and father-in-law of the deceased woman and charged them for murder and terrorism," district police chief Rai Zameer-ul-Haq told AFP. The charge of "terrorism" is regularly applied in such cases so as to expedite the legal process.

Hundreds of women are murdered by their relatives in Pakistan each year through domestic violence or on the grounds of defending family "honour".

The Aurat Foundation, a campaign group that works to improve the lives of women in Pakistan's conservative and patriarchal society, says more than 3,000 women have been killed in such attacks since 2008.

(RT) A new video released by the so-called Islamic State's affiliates in Libya purports to show the killing of two groups of Ethiopian Christians.

The 29-minute video shows two groups of captives held by the Islamic State (IS, formerly known as ISIS/ISIL), described by onscreen text as "followers of the cross from the enemy Ethiopian Church." It says one group is being held by an ISIS affiliate in eastern Libya and the other in the south of the country. Each group has about 15 captives.

A spokesman for the Ethiopian government said he cannot confirm his country's citizens were the ones killed in the video."We have seen the video but our embassy in Cairo has not been able to confirm that the victims are Ethiopian nationals," Redwan Hussein told Reuters. "Nonetheless, the Ethiopian government condemns the atrocious act."

In the video, a masked fighter brandishes a pistol, threatening Christians must convert to Islam or pay with their lives. He describes Christians as crusaders whose goal is to kill Muslims. The footage then shows both groups of captives being killed by the terrorists, one group is beheaded and the other shot dead.

The new video bears similarities with another one, released in February, where militants beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians. Both videos were stamped with the logo of Islamic State's media wing, Al-Furqan.

IS managed to gain a foothold in Libya amid the chaos and infighting following the end of Muammar Gaddafi's regime. They have been using the internet to spread their message, often in the form of videos showing the killings of those they deem "enemies." The militants are also active in social media, and have hackers operating on their behalf.

Saturday, April 18, 2015

(CP) Two masked gunmen on motorcycles, believed to be Muslim, open fired on the campus of a Pakistani Catholic school in Lahore Friday morning, injuring one Christian student and two security guards.

The two gunmen began firing at the campus of St. Franciscan High School in the Behar colony of Lahore, the second largest Christian residential area in Pakistan, around 10:30 a.m. The masked perpetrators were able to race away on their motorcycles and were not identified.

Police have begun an investigation into the attack on the school, according to prominent Pakistani human rights attorney Sardar Mushtaq Gill, who told The Christian Post that the school shooting is yet another attack on the Lahore Christian community following the Youhanabad lynchings of two Muslims thought to be involved in the mid-march Taliban bombings of two Christian churches.

"They were [two] masked men, armed on motorcycles. They were masked with their faces covered," Gill explained. "It was in front of school. When they started firing, the guard intercepted. After making them injured, they fled away."

(Italy) Because so many people were sailing across the Mediterranean sea in which to find a new taxpayer funded life in Europe, the EU last year voted to curtail its rescue missions off the coast of Africa (yes, off the coast of Africa) to just 30 miles of the coast of Europe. Well, the people of Africa are still sailing across and unfortunately people are drowning. And the liberals are up in arms over how the EU is allowing people to drown off the coast of… Africa.

So much so that Laurens Jolles, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) representative in Italy, has berated Europe for its lack of action in accepting willy-nilly hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants (not including the poor people from Syria) who just want a chance of a better life. But like all liberals, he’s taken the easy option by attacking Italy (where all the immigrants rescued land) and the UK. Err, hello, the UK is one country out of 28, yet as always, the ethical latte drinkers feel that by attacking the UK they will somehow galvanise the rest of Europe to do their bidding. And Jolles berated the anti-immigrant lobby in the UK (which strangely for all its evilness failed to get a Taliban murderer deported back to Afghanistan due to his human rights) and then berated the UK for not doing enough to protect these poor people sailing across the Med looking for a new life:

“The fact that the UK has made it clear that it does not wish to participate in contributing measures to a rescue operation, or putting in place a rescue operation in the Mediterranean, is very concerning.”

Let's see. The UN, which has failed in everything it has tried to sort out, berates a country for not sending a fleet of ships thousands of miles in which to sort out yet another mess it hasn’t been able to resolve.

Update:
Another boat has gone down while trying to carry over 700 people to a new life in Europe.

GENEVA (McClatchyDC) — American citizens escaping Yemen, including small children and some frail elderly, are arriving exhausted in Djibouti after harrowing journeys from the besieged country, where a U.S.-supported Saudi Arabian bombing campaign is entering its fourth week, the U.S. ambassador to the small Horn of Africa country told McClatchy on Thursday.

Calling the flight from Yemen “a tough experience” for many of the evacuees, the U.S. envoy, Tom Kelly, said hundreds of Americans have arrived in Djibouti in recent days aboard foreign ships and aircraft after journeys that for some included hundreds of miles of dangerous land travel from Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, to the ports of Hodeidah and Aden.

In one case, Kelly said, some would-be evacuees were left behind at the port of Aden because they had been unable to climb up rope ladders to board an Indian navy frigate from smaller boats that had ferried them to the larger ship, which had been unable to dock because of fighting in the city.

“Not all were able to get on board,” he said. The 500 or so who did included dozens of Americans, who were brought aboard the frigate, the Tarkesh, to Djibouti on April 11, he said.

The arrival of American evacuees from Yemen has overwhelmed the diplomatic mission in Djibouti, a former French colony across the Red Sea from Yemen that has just 800,000 residents.

“We don’t have a large embassy, but we’re working around the clock to make sure we can provide care and shelter to everyone coming from Yemen,” he said. Kelly said the U.S. State Department is dispatching more consular affairs officers to Djibouti to help with the expected crush.

How many Americans ultimately will make it to Djibouti is unknown, but Kelly said he is preparing to receive “a large number,” though he cautioned that many who want to leave Yemen may not be able to.

“The situation in Yemen is tough, and it’s hard for people to get out,” he said in a telephone interview.

On Thursday, 59 American citizens, and 40 relatives, were among 400 passengers evacuated from the Red Sea port of Hodeidah by the Indian navy ship the Sumitra, Kelly said.

The Obama administration so far has declined to organize a rescue mission for the estimated 3,000 to 4,000 U.S. citizens in Yemen. U.S. officials have said they believe it is too dangerous for U.S. military assets to enter Yemeni waters and air space. They’ve also suggested that organizing Americans to meet at a single departure point would put them at risk of attack from al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula or other terrorist groups seeking American hostages.

That, however, has left Americans largely on their own to find a way out of the country. The U.S. Embassy in Sanaa has been closed for months, and the last American troops in the country were evacuated last month, a few days before the Saudi bombing campaign began.

In a message posted on its website, the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa advises that an Indian naval vessel will be leaving Hodeidah for Djibouti and that it had been informed that Americans would be welcomed. But the embassy also noted that “unfortunately, we don’t have information on who to contact to board this ship.”

A few dozen Americans have made it aboard U.N.-organized evacuation flights from Sanaa to Khartoum, Sudan, and others have made it out aboard Russian ships, according to news accounts.

But the largest number seem bound for Djibouti, where Kelly said he travels to the port daily to greet the new arrivals. To date, he said, “I have not seen any people injured,” but he added that many have required medicine or other kind of assistance.

(Afghanistan) A suicide bomber targeted a queue outside a bank in Jalalabad which saw 33 people murdered and another 100 injured simply for the sake of it. Yes, the idiots who, once they get to the UK and cannot be deported because of their human rights, today added another blood fest to their CVs. And the left tell me that Islam is a religion of peace. Well, not to the poor Islamic victims who died today and certainly not to the Muslims who carried out this totally pointless, barbaric act.

And left-wing pricks in the West feel we should be talking to the terrorists, not militants, but terrorists who carry out such acts.

(Melbourne) Police say they have foiled an ISIS inspired plot to target police at an Anzac memorial event in Melbourne scheduled for next week.

200 police officers took part in the counter-terrorism operation in the city early on Saturday, arresting 5 teenagers who it seems where going to carry out some form of terrorist attack using edged weapons. One of them, Sevdet Besim, from Hallam in Melbourne's south-east, has been charged with 'conspiracy to commit acts done in preparation for, or planning, terrorist acts'.

The five idiots arrested had been under surveillance, and the raids were conducted after the police became aware of a specific threat, Deputy Commissioner Michael Phelan of the Australian Federal Police said at the news conference.

“These people have been on our radar.”

Acting deputy commissioner for the Federal Police, Neil Gaughan, said the five men were associates of Abdul Numan Haider who was shot and killed in Melbourne last September after attacking two police officers with a knife.

(Pretoria) The blacks of South Africa (SA) rightly fought against the apartheid and in 1994 they consigned that ugly chapter of SA into the bin. For the first 14 years SA presented a shining example to the world of how a multicultural society should be, and since 2008 the place has simply reverted to just another African country riven by tribal power. In this case, the tribe is the Zulu, led by King Goodwill Zwelithini who a fortnight ago said:

Foreigners should 'take their bags and go'. 'We must deal with our own lice' and then complained about foreign-owned shops:

This was seen by a lot of South Africans as the green light to murder death kill and stock up from the shop you've just looted, while the Zulu king is now saying his words were taken out of context. A large number of people agree with him, including the son of President Zuma:

“We need to be aware that as a country we are sitting on a ticking time bomb of them [foreigners] taking over the country.

Anyway, the latest from SA is that gangs of black Africans are attacking foreigners for living in the country. Yes, angry at how they are still living in shitty conditions, the locals have taken a leaf out of the Apartheid era and decided that those who are not South African are the reason why they are poor and deserve to be shown their place. Which has resulted in them attacking foreign run shops and looting them. After 2 weeks of attacks and looting (and a number of deaths), the government has decided to do something and sent in the police to protect foreign nationals, they have also opened up patrolled refugee camps across the country for displaced foreigners which, as of Friday morning, numbered 8,000:

Other African countries have started repatriating their citizens out of South Africa.

Friday, April 17, 2015

(Washington) In an attempt to hand over yet more military secrets to China, the Obama administration has approved the sale of the latest iteration of the Huey Cobra, Bell AH-1Z Viper. Taking no notice of how far the Pakistani government has got into bed with the Chinese, the Obama administration feels that the country which has handed over US state secrets to China can be trusted to keep the latest technology away from the Chinese.

For those of you who don’t know, Pakistan is in the market for new helicopter gunships to replace the Vietnam era Huey cobras it currently uses. With that in mind, it initially asked for the AH-64-D Apache gunships but was sent packing by the US. They in turn signed a deal with Russia to furnish it with the Hind, but in a surprise move, China gifted it with 3 of its latest WZ-10 gunships, as used by the Chinese, with an option to purchase 20 at mates rates.

Well, not content with the Chinese stealing as much US military tech during Obama's watch, his Democrat idiots have hit on the idea of trying to woo the Pakistanis with selling them the latest AH-1Z, complete with 1,000 Hellfire missiles and the TopOwl helmet system which allows the pilot to kill anything just by looking at it. Then there’s the electronic, such as the IFF system, the missile warning system, the communications system, as currently in use by the Marines. But it gets better, the one thing the Chinese really are trying to steal is engine technology, and they are willing to hand over a couple of spare ones, which anybody with a single brain cell would quickly work out would end up in China. But hey, not content with running down the US military, it appears the Muslim-in-chief wants to ensure that his attempts to downgrade the US military haven’t happened fast enough and that the Chinese must be given actual physical examples of US military hardware in which to help them on their way.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

(Islamabad) It's no secret that Pakistan is on the market for helicopter gunships to replace the Vietnam era Cobras it currently fields. With the US telling them to bugger off in regards to the AH-64E Apache, with the EU doing the same with the Tiger/Tigre, the Pakistanis looked at the Turkish T129 the Russian Hind which, funny enough, the Russians approved to sell to Pakistan last November, and the Chinese WZ-10. Well, in an attempt to win the Pakistani government over, it appears that the Chinese have gifted 3 WZ-10 gunships to the Pakistani army to do as they please.

Three Z-10 attack helicoptersat the Qasim Army base, Rawalphindi

As mentioned before by this blog, the WZ-10 is the Chinese version of the Apache gunship which, funny enough, owes a lot of its design tothe Agusta A129 Mangusta which China borrowed a few years back in which to see if they should purchase it. (Yeah, right.) Ironically, the Turkish T129, which the Pakistani army looked at, is simply a later iteration of the A129, which to all intent and purposes is exactly what the WZ-10 appears to be. But then the Turks didn't just hand over 3 to Islamabad.

No matter the pedigree, the WZ-10 appears to be a formidable helicopter gunship. Armed with up to 16 anti-tank missiles, 4 anti-aircraft missiles and a chin mounted machine gun, I'd guess that China will sell a lot of these to other countries.

(Karachi) 55-year-old Debra Lobo was shot today by a bunch of religious bigots who tried to murder her for the crime of being born in America. It appears that she had lived in Pakistan for 25 years, is married to a Pakistani and has 2 children who were born in Pakistan. Not only that but she was the vice principle at the main dental college in the country which helps train Pakistani people to help their fellow countrymen. However, that didn’t stop two idiots from trying to murder this woman whose only crime was to help her fellow men.

Messages in English and Urdu were dropped at the scene, saying the attack was carried out by the “Lions of Daulah Al-Islamiyyah”, using the Arabic name for the Islamic State group (IS) which has seized swathes of territory in Iraq and the Middle East.

(Italy) The EU has a big problem. Due to the liberal mindset that is ingrained within its DNA, it actually patrols just off the coast of Africa in which to rescue immigrants who seek to live a better life, away from the conditions found within the land they call home. Once rescued, these people are flown to the European mainland and are granted the right to live in Europe, bypassing all the legal channels. The problem for Europe is hundreds of thousands of people are now making the journey in which to be able to recreate the conditions they left behind in their new homes.

Anybody who speaks out against these people is instantly shot down by the left as a bigot, racist and xenophobe. Yet a story is slowly emerging of the mindset of some of these people whom the left can only see as victims of Western imperialism.

After a boatload of refugees were rescued earlier on this week, police in Italy arrested 17 Islamic males for having thrown 12 people off the boat they were in into the sea to drown for the crime of being... Christians. According to a group of Nigerian and Ghanaian survivors, a fight broke out over religion, with a group of Muslim passengers threatening the Nigerians and Ghanaians after they declared themselves to be Christians.

In trying to save life, the EU has inadvertently increased the number of people who now risk everything in which to get to the mythical land of El Dorado. I don't know what the answer is, but something will have to be done, simply as Europe cannot accommodate everybody from Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

(Iraq) An ISIS suicide bomber failed big time to murder others for Allah when the vehicle borne bomb he was in hit a roadside explosive device which catapulted the vehicle hundreds of feet into the air, where it spectacularly exploded.

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Hamas' Interior Ministry celebrates its model 5-year-old - an armed child soldier, and in doing so shows how little separates it from ISIS.

(INN) Hamas evidently wanted to leave no doubts that when it comes to implementing its jihadist genocidal goals of wiping out the Jewish people by all terrorist means at its disposal, age is no barrier - and that brainwashing works all the better the younger you start.

Hamas's Ministry of Interior, which is part of its "governmental branch" that some in the international arena have sought to give legitimacy, posted a photo shoot on its official Facebook page last Friday, unveiling a tiny child soldier of the terror group.

The little boy, no older than five, is seen in full military fatigues holding an actual automatic rifle, with the accompanying text reading "these are our lion cubs.We have brought them up on the love of Jihad and Shahada (martyrdom-death)," as translated by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW).

Hamas's Ministry of Interior is in fact part of the unity government formed between the group and the Palestinian Authority (PA) last year, after they reached a unity agreement in April. In practice, the two bodies have been acting independently with the rival factions continuing to feud.

PMW has in the past revealed how the PA's leading Fatah faction enforces the same brainwashing of children to embrace "martyrdom," namely dying while conducting a terrorist attack.

The Fatah Culture and Information Commission in January released a statement on the official WAFA news agency, reading "we believe that martyrdom-death (Istish'had) for Palestine is a destiny we assume willingly and serenely, for a free and dignified life for our people in the paradise of the eternal homeland."

In encouraging child soldiers to fight for jihad, Hamas and Fatah share a similarity with yet another Arab terrorist organization - Islamic State (ISIS).

Named the J-18 Red Eagle, very little has surfaced regarding this concept aircraft other than a few film clips. However, yesterday, Jane's Defence reported that the Chinese aircraft manufacturer Aviation Industries of China has started work on a VTOL/STOL aircraft.

(Israel) The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS) are most vocal in expressing their hatred for the Jews, which they thinly disguise by saying that they aren't anti-Semitic but rather they are just angry about the racist regime in place in Israel which uses apartheid laws in which to keep the Muslims down.

Anyway, it transpires that Apple, which is famous for its iPhones and such has just bought Israeli tech company LinX which makes tiny SLR quality cameras that can fit inside electrical gadgets.

The next time you see a rabid idiot foaming at the mouth and calling you a Nazi for not subscribing to their blind hatred, have a butchers to see if the twat is sporting an iPhone. If he/she is, tell them they are a f-ing hypocrite.

(Mogadishu) Continuing in its attempts to reverse the losses it has suffered across the country, Al Shabaab, the Islamic terrorist outfit which has spread so much puritanical love to the people of Somalia worthy of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, have continued in carrying out another murderous attack against people simply trying to get on with their lives, resulting in the deaths of 17 people.

Yup, today they launched an attack on the ministry of education by driving a car bomb into the building, then in the resulting confusion they sent in 7 idiots with weapons to try and murder as many people as possible. Thankfully, they were shot dead by security forces, but not before they murdered 15 people.

(New York) Mohammed Dahbi, a yellow cab driver in New York City, wasn’t impressed when same sex partners Christy Spitzer and Kassie Thornton got into the back of his cab with their pet pooch. So much so he abused them with foul language (bitches, c*nts and whores) before they decided to get out of the taxi without paying.

The incident occurred on September 18, 2011, after Spitzer and her dog climbed into Dahbi’s cab and proceeded to pick up Thornton. When they arrived, Thornton, who had been travelling, put her luggage in the taxi’s trunk, and Dahbi began driving them to Thornton’s home in Sunset Park. The women testified in court that the cab driver told them to stop kissing and “save that behaviour for the bedroom.”

Dhabi during the hearing claimed that he couldn’t keep his eyes on the road and was distracted because Spitzer and Thornton were kissing “heavily” and “touching all over each other.” Dahbi further told the judge that he found their behaviour “distracting” and feared it would make him have an accident.

Yeah, so offended was Mohammed, he couldn’t keep his eyes off the couple. Anyway, for his bigoted attitude he was ordered to pay the couple $10,000, pay a fine of $5,000 and attend anti-discrimination training.

You know what, the more bigoted religious idiots who are hit with fines like the above isn’t a day too soon for me. Everybody is equal and we all bleed when cut. Just because you subscribe to a polarised faith, doesn't give you the right to abuse anybody.

Mind you, I did like how Mohammed, who was so offended by the sight of two girls together, couldn't keep his eyes off of them.

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Can you imagine the outcry of "the world community" if Israel imposed a similar sentence?

CAIRO (Reuters) - People who dig and use cross-border tunnels in Egypt could face a maximum penalty of life in jail, state news agency MENA said on Sunday, citing amendments to the penal code targeting activity in the frontier area near the Gaza Strip.

Egypt declared a state of emergency in the border area last year after at least 33 security personnel were killed in attacks in the Sinai Peninsula, a remote but strategic region bordering Israel, Gaza and the Suez Canal.

There were several militant attacks in the Sinai on Sunday.

The amendments to the penal code were passed by presidential decree, MENA said.

It also said people who used illegal crossings to transfer goods or equipment could also face a life sentence, as well as people with knowledge of them who failed to report them to the authorities.

It said the government had the right seize buildings on top of the tunnels or any of the tools used to make them.

Residents of Sinai, who complain they have long been neglected by the state, say they rely on smuggling trade through tunnels for their living. Egyptian authorities see the tunnels as a threat and regularly destroy them.

In November Egypt said it would deepen its buffer zone with Gaza after finding local tunnels, a move which stoked local resentment.

BAGHDAD – Islamic State militants hammered, bulldozed and ultimately blew up parts of the ancient Iraqi Assyrian city of Nimrud, destroying a site dating back to the 13th century B.C., an online militant video purportedly shows.

The destruction at Nimrud, located near the militant-held city of Mosul, came amid other attacks on antiquity carried out by the group now holding a third of Iraq and neighboring Syria in its self-declared caliphate. The attacks have horrified archaeologists and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who last month called the destruction at Nimrud "a war crime."

The seven-minute video, posted late Saturday, shows bearded militants using sledgehammers, jackhammers and saws to take down huge alabaster reliefs depicting Assyrian kings and deities. A bulldozer brings down walls, while militants fill barrels with explosives and later destroy three separate areas of the site in massive explosions.

"God has honored us in the Islamic State to remove all of these idols and statutes worshipped instead of Allah in the past days," one militant says in the video. Another militant vows that "whenever we seize a piece of land, we will remove signs of idolatry and spread monotheism."

The militants have been destroying ancient relics they say promote idolatry that violate their fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law, including the ancient Iraqi city of Hatra, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Authorities also believe they've sold others on the black market to fund their atrocities.

Some of the figures in the video released Saturday at Nimrud appeared to have rebar, ribbed bars of steels designed to reinforce concrete that are a technique of modern building. An Iraqi Antiquities Ministry official, speaking Sunday on condition of anonymity as he wasn't authorized to talk to journalists, said all the items at Nimrud were authentic. In March, both Iraqi and United Nations officials warned the site had been looted and damaged.

The video conformed to other Associated Press reporting about the militants' attack.

The Assyrians first rose around 2,500 B.C. and at one point ruled over a realm stretching from the Mediterranean coast to what is present-day Iran. They left dozens of palaces and temples decorated with huge reliefs mainly depicting their kings' military campaigns and conquests, hunting lions and making sacrifices to the gods. Their main hallmark was the colossal winged man-headed lions or bulls, protective deities put at the entrances of palaces and temples weighing about 10-30 tons each.

Located on the eastern side of the Tigris River, Nimrud, or Kalhu, was founded in the 13th century B.C. During the reign of King Ashurnasirpal II, Nimrud served as the second capital for Assyrian Empire. Other Assyrian capitals were Ashur, Dur Sharrukin and Ninevah.

Excavations at Nimrud were first started by the British traveler and archaeologist Austen Henry Layard from 1845 to 1851, followed by other foreign and local excavation missions.

The city is surrounded by a four-side wall measuring 5 miles long. Among the ruins are the grand palace of Ashurnasirpal II, as well as the temples of Nabu, the god of writing and the arts, and other temples.

Among the most significant discoveries at Nimrud were four tombs of royal women. There, a collection of 613 pieces of gold jewelry and precious stones were unearthed. They survived the looting of the Iraqi National Museum that followed the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 as they were kept in a vault at the Central Bank of Iraq building by Saddam Hussein's government.

Madrid (AFP) - A gang suspected of links to the Islamic State group planned possible kidnappings, an execution and attacks on Jewish shops and public buildings in Spain, an investigating judge said Friday.

Judges in Madrid questioned the 11 suspects, including a woman and a 17-year-old, who were arrested on Wednesday in Spain's northeastern Catalonia region.

Ten of were accused of belonging to the Islamic Brotherhood for Preaching Jihad, a group in Spain suspected of recruiting members for the IS insurgency, the National Court in Madrid said on Friday.

An eleventh suspect was accused of possessing arms and explosives, Judge Santiago Pedraz said in a written ruling.

The IS controls swathes of Syria and Iraq, where it has committed highly publicised abuses including mass kidnappings and executions.

Authorities now fear the jihadists may extend their attacks into Europe.

"They were considering abducting a person in Spain, dressing them in an orange overall in the style of the group known as Islamic State, interrogating them and cutting their throat in order to broadcast it" by video, a source in the investigation told AFP.

The IS has frequently broadcast footage showing their execution victims wearing orange suits of the same style given to prisoners at the controversial US military prison in Guantanamo Bay.

Gang members had also discussed "abducting the director of a bank branch" for ransom, the source added.

The court remanded in custody seven of the suspects on terrorism charges, and released three others pending further proceedings.

After a separate hearing another judge sent the 17-year-old to a juvenile detention centre, a court source added.

Officials said on Wednesday that five of the suspects were Moroccans, five Spanish and one Paraguayan.

They said the cell had already sent at least four recruits to Syria and Iraq, where the IS declared a "caliphate" last year.

A source in the investigation said the suspects appeared to have been radicalised "very quickly".

Police investigations revealed that the suspected cell founder, Antonio Saez Martinez -- dubbed "Ali the Hairdresser" -- told other members he came close to launching an attack on a Jewish bookshop in Barcelona, Judge Pedraz wrote.

He allegedly proposed attacks with guns and grenades against synagogues, security forces and the Catalan regional parliament.

Police found on his mobile phone photographs of potential targets for attacks in Barcelona such as a hotel, a police station and a shopping centre, the ruling said.

The judge said another of the suspects was a "neo-Nazi" who was caught with a hand grenade, knives, guns and ammunition, while another had material that could be used to make bombs.

Spain stepped up counterterrorism operations after jihadist attacks killed 17 people in Paris in January.

Spanish authorities have arrested around 40 suspected jihadists so far this year -- five more than in the whole of 2014.

Map of massacre locations and deportation and extermination centers (Wikipedia)

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis sparked a diplomatic incident with Turkey on Sunday by calling the slaughter of Armenians by Ottoman Turks "the first genocide of the 20th century."

Francis, who has close ties to the Armenian community from his days in Argentina, defended his pronouncement by saying it was his duty to honor the memory of the innocent men, women and children who were "senselessly" murdered by Ottoman Turks 100 years ago this month.

"Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it," he said at the start of a Mass in the Armenian Catholic rite in St. Peter's Basilica honoring the centenary.

In a subsequent message directed to all Armenians, Francis called on all heads of state and international organizations to recognize the truth of what transpired and oppose such crimes "without ceding to ambiguity or compromise."

Turkey, which has long denied a genocide took place, immediately summoned the Vatican ambassador to express its displeasure, a Foreign Ministry spokesman in Ankara said on customary condition of anonymity.

Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed by scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey, however, has insisted that the toll has been inflated, and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest, not genocide. It has fiercely lobbied to prevent countries, including the Holy See, from officially recognizing the Armenian massacre as genocide.

DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh hanged Islamist opposition leader Muhammad Kamaruzzaman on Saturday for war crimes committed during the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan, a move met with an angry reaction from his supporters who called for a protest strike.

Kamaruzzaman, 63, of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was hanged at Dhaka Central Jail after the Supreme Court rejected his appeal against a death sentence imposed by a special tribunal for genocide and torture of civilians during the war.

He refused to beg for a pardon from the president. The head of the jail confirmed that the execution took place at 10:30 p.m. (12:30 p.m. EDT).

[...]

Senior Jamaat-e-Islami official Abdul Quader Molla was hanged for war crimes in December 2013 after the Supreme Court overturned a life sentence imposed by the tribunal.

Eight others have been sentenced to death for their actions in the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.

More than 200 people were killed in protests against the cases in 2013, including Islamist party activists and members of the security forces.

The territory of East Pakistan broke away to become independent Bangladesh in 1971 after a war between Bangladeshi nationalists, backed by India, and Pakistani forces. About three million people were killed in the conflict.

Some factions in Bangladesh, including Jamaat-e-Islami, opposed the break with Pakistan. The party denies accusations that its leaders committed murder, rape and torture.

CAIRO (Reuters) - An Egyptian court sentenced Mohamed Badie, leader of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, and 13 other senior members of the group to death for inciting chaos and violence, and gave a life term to a U.S.-Egyptian citizen for ties to the Brotherhood.

The men were among thousands of people detained after freely elected Islamist president Mohamed Mursi was toppled in 2013 by the military under Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who is now president.

Sisi describes the Brotherhood as a major security threat. The group says it is committed to peaceful activism and had nothing to do with Islamist militant violence in Egypt since Mursi's fall following mass protests against his rule. [...]

U.S.-Egyptian citizen Mohamed Soltan was sentenced to life in jail for supporting the veteran Islamist movement and transmitting false news. He is the son of Brotherhood preacher Salah Soltan, who was among those sentenced to death.

(Daily Mail) Depraved militants fighting for the Islamic State in Iraq have brutally beheaded four men accused of theft, before displaying their bodies on railings in a town square.

Taken in ISIS' northern stronghold of Mosul, the photographs show four men being interviewed by the terrorists before they are dragged before bloodthirsty crowds eager to see their executions.

The savage punishment is a significantly more extreme than ISIS' usual punishment for theft - which typically sees the accused having their right hand hacked-off by machete-wielding jihadis who pump the men full of drugs to numb the limb before severing it from the victim's body.

ADEN (Reuters) - Local militiamen in the Yemeni city of Aden said they captured two Iranian military officers advising Houthi rebels during fighting on Friday evening. [...]

Three sources in the southern port city's anti-Houthi militias said the Iranians, identified as a colonel and a captain, were seized in two separate districts that have been rocked by heavy gun battles.

"The initial investigation revealed that they are from the Quds Force and are working as advisors to the Houthi militia," one of the sources told Reuters.

"They have been put in a safe place and we will turn them over to (the Saudi-led coalition) Decisive Storm to deal with them."

Friday, April 10, 2015

(JNS.org) Spanish authorities have arrested members of an alleged radical Islamist cell on suspicion of trying to obtain explosives and bomb a Jewish bookstore in Barcelona.

The terrorists were also planning to target synagogues and other public buildings, said an investigating magistrate, Reuters reported. Of the 11 people arrested, seven are being formally investigated and are being held in custody until their trials.

Authorities found 25 bags that belonged to the suspects containing trace amounts of chemicals that could be used to make explosives. The leader of the cell, who was one of the suspects detained, has said that he had been "about to attack a Jewish bookshop in Barcelona."

WASHINGTON/KANSAS CITY (Reuters) - A U.S. man was arrested on Friday as part of a sting operation by the FBI in which he was plotting a suicide car bombing at Fort Riley army base in Kansas in support of the Islamic State militant group, prosecutors said.

John T. Booker, Jr., 20, of Topeka, Kansas, had arrived at the base with two undercover FBI agents to detonate what he did not realize was an inert bomb, prosecutors said.

Booker has been charged with three criminal counts including attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to provide material support to Islamic State, a militant group that has captured parts of Iraq and Syria over the past year and has symphathizers in several countries.

According to the criminal complaint, the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been tracking Booker since March of last year when he posted Facebook messages in which he said: "Getting ready to be killed in jihad is a HUGE adrenaline rush!! I am so nervous. NOT because I'm scared to die but I am eager to meet my lord."

If convicted, Booker faces up to life in prison. A lawyer for Booker could not be immediately identified for comment.

Booker had signed up for the U.S. army in Kansas the previous month and when interviewed by FBI agents after the Facebook postings admitted he had enlisted "with the intent to commit an insider attack against American soldiers" similar to the attack carried out in November 2009 by Major Nidal Hassan at Fort Hood, Texas, the complaint said.

He was denied entry into the army before his basic training began last April as a result.

Since October, he had unknowingly been in contact with an undercover FBI agent and in March of this year was introduced to another undercover agent who posed as a high-ranking Islamic sheik planning attacks on the United States.

Booker planned to carry out a suicide bombing because it would ensure he would hit his mark and never be captured, the complaint said.

On March 10, Booker, accompanied by the two undercover agents, made an Islamic State propaganda video near Marshall Army Airfield at Fort Riley, prosecutors said. He made an additional video two days ago in front of what was, unbeknownst to him, a stack of inert explosive materials.